


Forget

by snarkasaurus



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkasaurus/pseuds/snarkasaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted December 2010 to my fic jounal. Transfering to AO3. </p>
<p>Susan forgets. The other Pevensie children do not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget

It isn’t about the, “Do you remember when…?” or the “What about the time that…?”, or even the moments of frustration with a body uncooperative in doing what it had learned to do years—moments—before. It was about the pain, the desperate clutching for each fleeting emotion, and desperation not to _forget_ If they forgot, then all was lost.

Lucy noticed Susan forgetting first. Of course she did. Lucy the Observant. Lucy the Steadfast. Lucy the one who always noticed whenever one of them got a detail wrong. Lucy noticed the day Susan tossed her hair over her shoulder and brushed aside her sister’s wistful remembrance of a ball long ago.

She told Peter, who frowned slight, but told Lucy not to worry, he was sure that it was just that Susan was distracted. He ignored the voice roaring deep inside of him, telling him not to let any of his siblings forget, don’t let them forget, if they forget, they’re lost.

Edmund noticed next. He was playing chess, the way he was always playing chess, and Susan rolled her eyes, and asked where Edmund had become so obsessed with the game. “It’s all you ever do,” she said. “Why don’t you go outside and play some cricket, or something.”

Peter was in the room that time, but still, he ignored what was right in front of him. How could Susan, Queen Susan the Gentle, forget the Narnia that had so adored her? It simply didn’t bear thinking of, and he pushed aside Edmund and Lucy’s worries.

The day Peter couldn’t ignore it any longer, though, was the day Susan got mad at him for objecting to her date one night. “What makes you think you can run my life?” she demanded. “I have every right to date who I want. The only person who can tell me no is Father. You’re not a king, Peter, whatever games we might have played as children, so stop acting like it.”

Susan, who had reminded Peter time and again that he was High King Peter, and he couldn’t just do whatever he wanted, he had to think of Narnia. Susan, who had deferred to him so many times when a new suitor appeared, asking for her hand. Susan…

She had forgotten.

He was staring at his bedroom ceiling, going over everything that he could have done, should have done, might have done to keep Susan from forgetting, when his door creaked. Peter looked toward it, and saw a sliver of light, blocked by a slim figure. “Lu?” he asked softly.

Lucy took it as an invitation, and dashed into the room, leaving the door open behind her. She leaped onto the bed next to Peter and clung to him, sobs shaking her.

“I was right, wasn’t it?” she wept into his chest, and all Peter could do was hold her. “She’s forgotten.”

Edmund slipped into the room and shut the door while Peter was trying to calm his crying, trembling sister. “She has. She’s forgotten. Or, if not forgotten, then pushed it where it can’t hurt her,” he said, settling on the edge of the bed next to his siblings. He reached out and gently pet Lucy’s hair, eyes on Peter’s face.

Peter didn’t know what to say. They were right, of course. They had been right, he had just been too desperate to hold on not to see it. He shifted instead, pulling Lucy with him and wordlessly inviting Edmund to curl around Lucy, help Peter calm her. Somehow, they all wound up huddled under the blankets, Lucy carefully cocooned in her brothers’ arms. She still wept softly.

“One day,” she whispered, fingers locked around Peter’s sleeve. “One day, we will go back. We'll go back to stay, forever, and Susan won’t be there with us.”

Edmund pressed his face into her hair. “No,” he choked out. “No, she won’t.”

Peter closed his own eyes. He had fought to keep his brother and sisters safe through all their years as kings and queens of Narnia. He’d struggled to hold them together as they all tried to learn how to be children again, in the middle of a war they could do nothing about. Somehow, Peter had failed, and he felt it cut into him, sharper than the deadliest sword.

“Maybe she will,” he finally whispered. “Maybe she’ll remember. One day. Or find Aslan here, like we were always meant to.” Peter offered this slimmest of hopes up to Lucy and Edmund. He knew, as they did, that it was ephemeral at best, but it was all they had.

And so, three of the four Pevensie children huddled, soft whispers, softer tears, with all the grief of a lost loved one flowing between them, as they yearned for Narnia once more.


End file.
